I attended dessert fest this weekend, which was the first festival I’ve been to since the third lolapalooza. they had two stages going on friday, so you only had to choose who you were seeing for the few minutes that the stages overlapped, but there on saturday there were two smaller stages going while the bigger bands you were there to see set up and you had to choose who to watch. I guess most people know how festivals work…
the definite highlight was seeing godflesh, which was the first time I’d seen a justin broaderick band in the almost thirty years that I’ve listened to his music. (I know I missed godflesh in high school, but I don’t remember having an opportunity to see jesu even though they were one of my favorite bands for a few years.) they had an immense guitar and bass sound, and the older, lower tempo material they played towards the end of their set was terrific. large parts of the boris set were really enjoyable, but parts of it were really boring, which is typical of boris over the last fifteen years even if they only played material from twenty years ago. conan was really good, the melvins are always good, heavy temple is good, colour haze was terrific (and closer to prog than metal), seeing mondo generator play a kyuss song was terrific even if the rest of their set was boring despite a terrific drum performance, and seeing djunah, whose singer sounds a lot like pj harvey playing harsher music, was a welcome respite from watching hairy dudes play guitar solos.
tldr? godflesh rules